Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Book Review: Monsters Among Us (Linda S. Godfrey, 2016)

A
few months ago, I received a new book from TarcherPerigee Books, courtesy of
the author, Linda Godfrey. The book in question is called Monsters Among Us: An Exploration of Otherworldly Bigfoots, Wolfmen,
Portals, Phantoms, and Odd Phenomena (TarcherPerigee, 2016). This book
is the latest installment in Linda’s relentless pursuit of real-life
werewolves, monsters, nighttime visitors, UFOs, and all sorts of weird things.
If any of you have read Linda’s previous books or spoken to her via email,
Facebook, or even had a face-to-face conversation with her, you already know
that you’re in for a treat. Linda’s
pursuit of the modern-day werewolf (and other such things) began in 1991, when
the newspaper she was working for at the time asked her to look into the rumors
of what appeared to be werewolf
stalking an isolated area near Elkhorn, Wisconsin called Bray Road. This search
culminated in 2003 in the form of a book called The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf
(Prairie Oak Press, 2003). Needless to say, she’s been hunting these creatures
ever since. This book is a complete chronicle of her latest investigations, and
it includes eyewitness sightings and interviews, drawings and illustrations
from the eyewitnesses, photos, her own personal thoughts and theories, the
strange experiences she’s had, and her own investigations, all coupled with
Linda’s razor-sharp wit and her inimitable sense of humor. Because the book’s
length and contents, this review will be a bit longer than the others.

Monsters Among Us is divided into five parts, and each chapter (and the
contents therein) has something to do with the section’s theme. The first part
of the book (and the first two chapters) deals with hellmouths (entrances to
the underworld), creatures that seem to have come from the underground realm,
beasts that attack (and ride inside)
vehicles, a dogman with a love of jogging,
and lizard men that dwell beneath the streets of Los Angeles. The story of “The
Torrance Werewolf” is particularly
frightening, involving a young girl and her teenage brother who witnessed a man
who came up from an underground area. He somehow knew the little girl’s name (even though she and her brother had never met the man before), and kept asking her to come forward.
When he started to get angry, he began to change,
and he gradually became a doglike monstrosity. She and her brother managed to
escape largely unharmed. Another story involved an eyewitness who saw a
grinning, dog-headed man riding in
the back seat of a black limousine. And this review is just getting started!

The
second part of the book (chapters three through five) deals primarily with
Linda’s specialty: sightings of werewolves and dogmen, as well as shapeshifters
of a most peculiar and frightening nature. In chapter three, you’ll find a
story of a man’s dog-headed son, and a man who went up to a farmhouse for help
with a flat tire, only to encounter a wolfman who not only appeared to live there, but actually threatened to kill the man if he didn’t leave. In addition,
there’s a story of a policeman who had a disconcerting encounter with a
cigarette-smoking wolfman in a gray hoodie, and a werewolf wearing a plaid
shirt that attacked a family taking a nighttime drive in Colorado. In chapter
four is the truly horrifying story of "The Church Lady Werewolf", in which a middle-aged woman transformed into a horrifying
wolf-beast with long claws, cloven hooves for feet, and a roar like a lion’s
inside of a church and in front of a
congregation of over two hundred people!!
This story must be read to be believed.Chapter five deals with werebeasts from South
America, and a man’s theories that such things may stem from witchcraft, that
native South American beliefs that the Ucumar (the South American equivalent of
Sasquatch) is a spirit-being may well be true, and his beliefs regarding
guardian spirits. Fascinating stuff.

Section
three (chapters six through twelve) is mostly about wolfmen and dogmen who
stalk people around their homes at night, nighttime bedroom invaders, and
shadowy wolflike entities, among other things. In this rather long section,
you’ll find stories about a phantom dogman that reeks of sulfur (which is commonly associated with demonic
manifestations), a woman’s encounter with a shadowy dog-beast in her basement,
a recounting of Nick Redfern’s encounter with a strange cape-wearing wolfman
(which I’ve covered in full detail in this blog’s entry on Phantom Werewolves),
a wolfman that spoke what the eyewitness said “sounded like perfect Greek or
Latin”, a man’s unnerving sighting of Anubis (the Egyptian jackal-headed god of
death and mummification) in Addison, Illinois, a shadowy wolf-beast that told a
young girl to put some arrowheads back where she had found them (although she
did keep one, and the beast apparently didn’t mind), an incredibly frightening tale of a shapeshifting
werewolf stalker, Linda’s very own
encounter with what appears to be the Grays of classic UFO lore, and a
truly horrifying encounter with a
nine-foot-tall werewolf straight out of The
Howling (1981) that glared at a young boy through his mother’s bedroom
window and scared the living HELL out of him! The final two chapters deal with
sightings of wolfmen on the homestead and more window-watchers, as well as
roadside encounters. I won’t say anymore at this point, as I don’t want to completely spoil this section of the
book. Now, onto the next section!

Section
Four of Linda’s book (chapters thirteen through eighteen) deals with two
sisters and their encounters with multiple anomalies over a period of five
years, including a Sasquatch, a possible dogman, balls of light, a Thunderbird,
a possible devil monkey (or a kangaroo, one of the two), poltergeist activity,
and another shadowy wolf-creature, as well as stick structures and portals.
Other chapters include a shadowy wolfman, anomalous happenings in the Bong
State Recreation Area in southeastern Wisconsin (and no, there was no smoking
involved!), sentient green mists, weird green glows with euphoric side-effects,
ball lightning, “the Oz Factor”, invisible arguing dwarves, and a glowing dogman, among other things. She
also talks about misty monsters and the possibility that some of these
creatures are able to “cloak” themselves, rendering them virtually invisible to human eyes. In chapter
eighteen, Linda gives a chilling account of a gray-furred wolfman known as “The
Hairy Hartland Thing”, which seems to have an unnatural interest in the
eyewitness’s house and has a disturbing habit of staring through her child’s
bedroom window. Hold on, folks…we’re almost done.

The
fifth and final section of the book (chapters nineteen through twenty-six)
features discussions of UFOs and their possible connection with Sasquatch and
werewolf sightings, UFO sightings, sightings of Sasquatch in the Chicago area,
invisible predatory stalkers (these stories are truly chilling, to put it mildly), an absolutely hilarious story about a clumsy Sasquatch that bumped its head on
some scaffolding and then took a dump
in some hollow concrete blocks (which the eyewitness actually kept!), and a group
of people being hunted by an invisible monster. Linda also takes the time to
talk about the mechanics of invisibility, land spirits (genii loci), fairy paths, and more portals. In fact, Linda spends
the entirety of chapter twenty-five
detailing her investigation into the possible existence of an interdimensional
portal in a farmer’s field. Needless to say, it’s incredibly fascinating. In the twenty-sixth and
final chapter in the book, Linda talks about physics (a class that I never
took) in regard to anomalous phenomena, including the possible existence of
alternate universes and other dimensions. I have to say, without giving away
the ending of the book, that her conclusions are both stunning and thought-provoking.

Overall,
Linda’s book is very well-written,
neatly organized, and free of grammar and spelling errors, and it is both
highly informative and very entertaining. Linda’s research, her investigative
skills, and her somewhat dry sense of humor make this book easy to read and
follow along with, an on top of that, it’s a ton of fun to read. This book can
be frightening at times (most of the time, in fact), but that just makes it even more fascinating to me! The sheer scope and the depth of Linda’s
research is absolutely mind-boggling,
and it may leave your head spinning after you put it down the first time. But
if you’re anything like me, you’ll
always be going back for more!

I have to say that I
owe a huge debt of gratitude to both Linda and TarcherPerigee: to Linda for her
friendship and her kindness for all of these years, and to TarcherPerigee for
sending me a copy of Monsters Among Us,
free of charge, and for giving me the opportunity to review this book. This
book is absolutely incredible, and I
honestly cannot recommend it more! If you’d like to read it for yourself, I
suggest that you get up, go to the bookstore, and buy a copy…NOW. Oh, and beware of wolfmen with glowing eyes
along the way! They’re out there, and these beasts are hungry.

About Me

I'm 29 years old, have a brother and two sisters, and I am currently at work researching for a book.
If you have had an encounter of a supernatural or a paranormal nature, please email me at KPG1986@msn.com. Please give me details on the appearance, the location, the behavior (if any could be observed), and whether or not the creature behaved in a threatening manner towards you. I'm not an expert on these creatures, but I'll try to help in any way that I possibly can. And when I send you a response, please take the time to send an email back. Thank you!